the
earliest times and may have been the ford known as the ford of St. Mary’s
abbey, a pre-Norman abbey that lay on the north side on the river. The name
of the lane, indicative of burial mounds, is interesting since in an excavation
carried out on the east side of Temple Lane (3-4 Crow Street see Archaeology),
a pit containing six Viking skeletons (three adults and three children) was
discovered which was dated to the eleventh century. This probably represents
the remains of such a mound, which was positioned on a natural peninsula,
which jutted out into the Liffey at this point.
•
Anglo
Norman Temple Bar
•
The Poddle river
Domestic occupation began in earnest in the Temple Bar area in the Anglo-Norman
period, from 1170 onwards. The biggest impediment to the physical expansion
of the town was the Poddle river, which effectively cut Temple Bar off from
the high ground around Christchurch Place/Castle Street.
The Poddle river was an important topographical feature which was artificially
channelled around the walled town and fed into the city moat in the late twelfth
century.
The
confluence at the north end of Parliament Street was wide and composed of
mud flats and a series of smaller river channels. It was this topography which
delayed the eastern expansion in this area until c.1600.
The Augustinian monastery
Further south, the documentary sources record the presence of property plots
along Dame Street, the street that led to the Priory of All Hallows (now Trinity
College, Dublin) and ultimately to Ringsend. The sources indicate that there
were a large number of gardens and orchards in these properties, probably
suggestive of bad land along the banks of the Liffey. There was however, the
peninsula of solid land jutting out into the Liffey at Cecilia Street/Fownes
Street/Temple Lane and, in the thirteenth century this was the location of
the Augustinian friary. The monks were mendicant friars and so administered
alms directly to the poor of Dublin (rather than a closed order). The precinct
of the friary stretched from Dame Street on the south to Temple Bar on the
north,
